The Call

Inspite of having horror veterans like Lin Shaye and Tobin Bell, the film is not at all interesting. It aint scary n has a lousy n ridiculous screenplay.

Honesty, i got enticed into seeing this cos of the two veterans starring together in a horror film.

Firstly the film takes almost 45 mins to pick up n then when the action starts, it gets filled with cliches, traumatized childhood, teenage secret, etc.

It has the same lol demon/possessed fella doing hyper extension of the joints but this time the demon/possessed fella looked as if it were doing break dance movements. Why these demons/possessed fellas gotta do unnecessary hyper extention of joints is beyond me. Ther is unnecessary annoying screaming, unnecessary red color n one helluva lousy screenplay. The end is a big wtf.

What the heck is Lin Shay and Tobin Bell doing in this mess - Yes you guessed it, to give it that poster appeal to all the Saw and Insidious fans out there and really is shameful exploitation of us the viewers who will pay for this thinking it is going to be of the same level of cinematic excellence!

Exceptionally good actors appearing in sub average nonsense like this; it seems they have joined the Ron Perlman, Lance Henriksen, Nik Cage and John Cusack brigade in the let us just take any old rubbish for a paycheque club - very sad!

Do not get me wrong the acting for the main part is good and it had a good build up but the denouement and idea just fizzled like a wet, limp little firecracker. I did love the homage to the 80's with the old style John Carpenter'esque analogue synths in keeping with when the movie was supposed to be set and I didnt see a smartphone or tablet anywhere so they got the setting right and the premise had promise, so where did it all go wrong?

Well, for a start there is no real horror, zero scares and crucially the idea behind the call was....well just a telephone call to the dead woman that really did not give us an oooh or an ahhh like movies like Saw or Final Destination did and so just followed the sad old tropes of budget bin horror basket movies of yesteryear and so it fails execrably in every way almost.

I am not so harsh as to give it a 1/10 as many of the reviewers have as this means it is the worst movie you have ever seen and we have movies like the Bad Batch with Keanu Reeves for that and many others; the acting is good, it is well filmed and professionally made unlike a lot of the shaky cam, dreadful acting Netflix ordure pouring out of film schools these days, so I give this one a harsh but fair, harsh but fair...4/10 hatchets!

Lin Shaye and Tobin Bell are horror Icons. Unfortunately they can't save bad writing, scare less deaths, poor dialog and a weak story.

Set in the mid eighties, the dialog is far more cliche than real, unlike Stranger Things and the recent It Ch 1. The acting is maybe a notch above a soap opera, but I'll give the lead credit. At least he's trying unlike the other 3 "teens." Seriously the line delivery felt straight out of Not Another Teen Movie.

The plot, the dreadful plot. Teens harass an old woman one of them suspects of witchcraft and the disappearance of her sister. Something happens to old woman. Teens must face their past...yada yada.

It is as cliched as it sounds but unlike movies like Saw, the past of a few of them is not their fault. So badly done.

I'd recommend watching any movie with Tobin Bell or Lin Shaye besides this one. It stinks.

Besides a few creepy bits with Lin Shaye, the movie was pretty crap. No real story and boring.

I believe this is the third movie I've watched now called 'The Call'. The first two were pretty good. This one not so much. Firstly, it wasn't the type of film I was anticipating. The synopsis implied a very different film to what I actually got. I was not expecting the supernatural to be the basis for the film. Secondly, my goodness these were some awful characters to be expected to root for. The film didn't do itself any favours in that regard.

I'll get some positives out of the way before I further discuss what I didn't like. If you have Lin Shaye and Tobin Bell in your film then you are very lucky. Regardless of the material, they are going to be fantastic, as they rightfully are here. Bell is more of a guide for the film, which we know he does so well. Shaye is relied on to be the horror - and she is the one thing that is actually scary in this movie. Her unhinged character works perfectly and is very disturbing.

The film also has a decent concluding sequence. At the point where most horror films tend to fall apart, this one actually manages to find its footing and become a little unsettling.

The problems though outweigh the good stuff. Very little works in the way of scares. Things just get too unrealistic, too quickly and it feels very fake. The main four teenagers (who I can only guess were intended to be the film's protagonists) are detestable people and not the type that anyone wants to be rooting for. If anything you should be rooting for Shaye's character.

'The Call' is a film that is going out of its way to be original and creative and it has to be given props for that. It rarely hits the mark, but hey you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And some of the shots in this film do indeed stick the landing. It's far from perfect, however I don't believe it's as bad as a 4.2/10 IMDb rating implies.